The Pew Charitable Trusts launched a report Power Shifts Emerging Clean Energy Markets in May, tracking the investment in renewable technology in developing countries. The report provides some great statistics on where investment is occurring, predicts future growth and examines in detail the top spending in the 10 leading developing countries, which includes Kenya.

In 2007 the government of Rwanda established the NDBP (National Domestic Biogas Program) in partnership with SNV (The Netherlands Development Organization) and GIZ (The German Development Organization) as financial and technical support partners. The objective of the program was to develop a commercial and sustainable domestic sector, substituting firewood with biogas for cooking and increasing agricultural production through provision of bio-slurry as a fertilizer.

The project is estimated to cost a whopping 582 million Euros and provide 300MW of low cost power to the national grid. The wind farm will occupy 40,000 acres of land in Loiyangalani district in north eastern Kenya stretching from 450m at the shores of Lake Turkana to 2,300m above sea level at the top of Mt Kulal. As a result of the daily temperature fluctuations, strong and predictable winds between the lake and the dessert are experienced with expected average speeds of 11 m per second.

Mobile payments, digital financing and innovative financing options are enabling the rapid deployment of renewable energy in Africa. This is good news for a number of reasons – including public health. The World Health Organization (WHO) found that fuels such as wood, dung, coal and other solid fuels - termed as the “killer in the kitchen” causes 1.5 million deaths annually and two thirds of these deaths takes place in sub-Sahara Africa and South-East Asia.

Africa is rapidly upgrading its digital television infrastructure. This isn’t just about enabling more people to watch their favorite shows – it’s a big move that will help spur economic development through an improved mobile and internet communication infrastructure. As covered previously on Cleanleap, analysis shows that improved internet connectivity in Africa could lead to a $300 billion contribution to GDP by 2025.

A new open source grain drying technology dubbed the EasyDry M500, has been developed in East Africa, to help small holder farmers dry grains effectively and quickly, to reduce post harvest losses. The portable dryer, dries 500 kilograms of maize in 3 hours, by lowering the moisture content from 20 to 13.5 percent, the recommended moisture content level, for maize storage.

One of the most exciting ventures a country and its cities can undergo is that of modernizing and redeveloping its buildings. The progress made is almost always positive, and literally can give cities a new face. Major infrastructure projects in Vietnam are not so slowly transforming the city for the better, upgrading various aspects ranging from transportation to water treatment and infrastructure.

In Northern Upper East Ghana, a water conservation technology is enabling about 400 smallholder farmers from 10 communities to farm in dry seasons. As a result they are now getting at least two crop seasons annually as opposed to one, after implementing the PAVE irrigation Technology which harvests flood and rain water, and stores it in underground aquifers where it lasts for up to 180 days.

In Rwanda, a ‘Pico-hydro’ refers to a power system with a capacity less than 50kW. Their advantage over other power systems is their cost-effectiveness and simplicity, and come in different designs, planning and installation processes. It is an economical source of power that has proven useful in delivering clean energy to some of the world’s poorest and most remote places.

Whether they are consumed as grains or flour they are always products in high demand in Africa - these being cereals such maize, sorghum, millet and wheat. One of the issues with these widely consumed crops is when people want to grind them and consume them as flour, with most remote areas lacking access to electricity and therefore use expensive fossil fuel to run milling machines.

Better housing is one of the key indicators of the economic development, but most developing countries still have a challenge to secure clean homes for their habitants. Dirt floors are often responsible up to 80 percent of diseases. In most cases, parasites live in soil in form of feces and bacteria that can be contagious by either absorption or a simple contact. EarthEnable has introduced a solution to all those problems.

The Croton tree, which is commonly known as Mukinduri in Eastern and Central part of Kenya, is now a good known source of biofuels and that is being practiced. It grows in a challenging environment and unlike jatropha and palm, it won't bring food and fuel competition. It has no chemical additives and burns cleaner than traditional diesel fuel, with no sulfuric content. It can save our environment from carbon emissions and help in better land usage.

Many companies use traditional methods to measure the impact of solar power investments such as quoting the many dollars invested, number of people using their kits and areas covered by their product, which are inadequate tools for measuring social impact for solar power investments if we have to get it right. Traditional approaches of gathering data are not only expensive, take time to give results and complicated to use, but are also not helpful in terms of boosting solar power funding. The lean data approach proposed by Acumen could, not only bridge solar power funding gaps in developing worlds, but will also help companies to understand emerging markets.

Research undertaken by Greentech Media (GTM) predicts that over the next five years, the global solar market will demonstrate a cumulative average growth rate of around 8%, with emerging economies including India and Latin America leading the progress.